I’ve used everything known to man to try and keep my dentures in and they just won’t stay. I don’t understand it. I’ve had them for years and it is only recently they started giving me this much trouble. Do you know what is going on?
Charles
Dear Charles,
The key to what is going on here is the phrase where you said “I’ve had them for years.” When you first removed your teeth, your body recognized that. In an effort to be as efficient with its resources, your body begins to resorb the minerals in your jawbone to use elsewhere in your body where it perceives they’ll be more useful. Unfortunately, this has the effect of slowly shrinking your jawbone. After ten or so years, you no longer have enough of your jawbone left to retain your dentures. This is known as facial collapse in dental circles.
The solution to this is two-fold. First, you will need to have the bone structure built back up with a bone grafting procedure. Once that has had time to heal you can move on to step two, which is replacing your teeth once more.
You can get dentures again if you’d like, but the whole cycle of facial collapse will begin again. Another option would be for you to get implant-supported dentures. This will place between four to eight dental implants in your jaw, not only securely anchoring your dentures, but signaling to your body there are teeth there and the jawbone needs to stay intact.
You’ll find your quality of life will go up significantly with dental implants as well.
This blog is brought to you by Atlanta Periodontist Dr. David Pumphrey.
